We’ve been playing flip-over-the-card memory games since we were in preschool with real, live cards and there’s a thousand of them in the iTunes App Store.
Fruit Memory HD is a super cute 99-cent iPad app. As in “OMG! Squeee!!!” cute. Plus, it can be played with one to four players. Bonus!
Three-year-olds (and those of us getting up there in age and diminished brain skills) can play with a 12-card deck. Up to a challenge? Then choose a 28- or 40-card deck.
To play with others, choose the number of players. Then choose an adorable little avatar and take turns flipping over cards. Get one right, get another turn. Whoever has the most matches wins! Ding ding!
The cards are laid on a charcoal-gray wooden floor. It would be nice if the game cards would rotate automatically when playing with three or four people. Each player has their own corner of the iPad screen, and players 3 and 4 have to essentially look at their game cards upside down.
Other than that essentially meaningless detail, Fruit Memory HD is a great game. My test subject, my 4-year-old niece, beat me about 94 percent of the time (not a scientific conclusion—there are no stats kept in the game). Either she is absolutely brilliant (quite likely) or I had a couple too many cocktails (also likely).
Thank goodness she could play one-player, or I would have been playing all night. I ended up gifting her the app so she can harass her parents to play on their iPad.
